mpc-public/mpc_orb

Code related to the "mpc_orb.json" format.

This format is intended to be used to describe the orbits of solar-system minor-planets, comets, irregular satellites, and interstellar interlopers.

The MPC currently populates mpc_orb.json files using data from the orbfit package, but we emphasize that the mpc_orb.json format is intended for the generic exchange of orbit data from any source.

As of April 2023, the latest version of the defining schema is version 0.4

• While the schema versions are numbered < 1, the format should be considered experimental/developmental/beta/WIP.

The repo currently contains code and documentation related to:

• A description of the "mpc_orb.json" format, and an associated defining JSON schema.
• Python code to demonstrate the validation of files in the "mpc_orb.json" format.
• Python code to facilitate the parsing of files in the "mpc_orb.json" format.

Repo Contents

(a) demos

• Demonstrations of python code usage, including python-scripts and jupyter notebooks.

(b) mpc_orb

• The main python code directory.

• Contains code to both validate & parse mpc-orb-json files

• Contains directories holding the defining schema (/mpc_orb/schema_json/) and sample files (/mpc_orb/demo_json/).

(c) docs

• Documentation describing the "mpc_orb.json" format, including allowed fields, required fields, etc

(d) tests

• Tests of the python code in the mpc_orb directory. For details of the test code, including how to execute the tests, please see the file /tests/README.md.

MPC_ORB JSON schema

• The JSON files defining the "mpc_orb.json" format can be found in /mpc_orb/schema_json

• Further documentation on the format can be found in /docs/

Python Functionalities (mpc_orb)

(i) Provide "parse" functions for JSON files containing "MPC_ORB.JSON" formatted data

• It is expected that this functionality will be used regularly by both internal MPC staff & external community users.

• The parsing code is in mpc_orb/parse.py

• Demonstrations of code usage can be found in demo/Example_parse_mpcorb_json.ipynb and demo/demo_parse.py

(ii) Provide validation functions

• It is expected that these validation functionalities will typically be used as part of the "parse" functions described in (i) above.

• I.e. it is not expected that the end-user will directly access the validation functions themselves, but rather, the validation functions are called under-the-hood by the mpc_orb/parse.py routines.

• The code that performs the validation can be found in mpc_orb/validate_mpcorb.py

Installation and Usage

The python code in mpc_orb is available as a pip-installable python package.

To do so the user can type:

pip install mpc_orb